A Skirmish in the War Brunch

This is a week or so old, but the brunch kerfuffle has now received the New Yorker treatment.

At the Swinging 60s Senior Citizens Center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a room filled with cafeteria tables veiled in plastic, a sign hanging from the wall says, “Old ladies never die. They just play bingo,” and another below it reads, “LUNCH will be served 12 noon to 12:30 P.M.” When the local community board gathered there for a meeting the other night, concerned citizens chimed in on a dispute over exactly when Sunday brunch is served. Certainly, it’s meant to come before lunchtime—though they may overlap—and ideally, if rarely, brunch belongs in the sweet spot of a late, lazy weekend afternoon. But the timing is a hotly contested issue, among sleepy relatives and New York bureaucrats alike. The official answer, according to a rarely enforced city law for sidewalk cafés, is not before noon. But this week, three New York City Council members set out to legislate in favor of morning brunching.

War on Street Life

05/16/2012 | 2 Comments

Community Board #1’s “war on brunch” has now officially became news last week, having been picked up by both WNYC and the New York Times. Credit for originating the story belongs to Aaron Short at the Brooklyn Paper. Too bad they let a catchy headline distract them from the real story (and no, it’s not about gentrification, though that’s a catchy headline too).

Sadly, these planters – civic though they may be – are
probably illegal.

The big story here is that the “war on brunch” is really a crackdown on street life. The Community Board, upset at a few bars and restaurants, has chosen to use a hatchet instead of a scalpel. Restaurants and property owners are getting summonses and warning letters about sidewalk benches, sidewalk planters and the like1. As with dining al fresco before noon on Sundays, these targets of the Community Board’s ire are actually the kinds of things that make a neighborhood more livable and more enjoyable.

There is a reason why city planners obsess over things like bench heights, and it goes all the way back to the great neighborhood advocate Jane Jacobs herself. Street life, be it seniors sitting on a bench or patrons waiting for a seat at an insanely popular restaurant, makes for better neighborhoods and better communities (or, as Holly Whyte put it, you can measure the health of a city by the vitality of its streets). Outlawing benches and planters isn’t going to make Pies ‘n’ Thighs any less popular (or any less good), though it will mean that more people – not less – are standing around waiting for a table and clogging up the sidewalk.

To be clear, all this wonderful street furniture is also illegal. But using laws against sidewalk furniture to go after a broad swath of businesses is a stop-and-frisk approach to a very specific problem. If the problem is that certain restaurants are flouting the laws about sidewalk cafes and creating an actual nuisance, go after those restaurants. If neighbors have specific complaints, the Community Board should (and traditionally has) acted as a broker, talking to the owners and the residents to work out a solution. If that doesn’t work, then use the relevant city agencies to crack down on the specific troublemaker.

In the long run, trotting out arcane, outdated blue laws is not an effective approach, if for no other reason than that it turns the target into a victim and the enforcer into a bully. The story now is not that some number of restaurant owners are breaking the law and creating a community nuisance, but rather that the Community Board, through City agencies, is using outmoded, ticky-tacky laws to bully a whole business sector (and in the process sweeping in private citizens who have rogue planters, benches and other contraband street furniture (lawns!!) in front of their houses). Ironically, the perennially bad neighbors on the nightlife scene haven’t been impacted by the crackdown, and may not be – most of their sidewalk cafes are legal, and they don’t open before noon on any day.

A nice place for seniors to sit or a public nuisance?
(Probably the latter – this bench looks to be on private
property

In other developments, Councilman Steve Levin is promising to introduce legislation to rescind the ridiculous prohibition on sidewalk eateries before noon on Sundays. Given that many of the neighborhood clergy – including Ann Kansfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church and Monsignor Calise of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (and a member of CB1) – have gone on record saying that Sunday morning eateries are not a threat to their religious observance, this is a good thing. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail on the bigger issue of the street furniture crackdown too.

1. It would be wonderful if this was the biggest issue facing our neighborhood – have we solved all our problems and are now ready to focus on this?↩

There Is No “War on Brunch” In Williamsburg

But there is a crackdown on street furniture and a lot of other things that make streets more livable and enjoyable – which is the real story.

Businesses have been getting threatening letters and summonses from the city for things like having benches and planters on the street (North 6th Street), etc. (and, yes, even for operating sidewalk cafes before noon on Sunday).

P.S. – kudos to Brownstoner for doing some actual level-headed reporting on the overblown war metaphors.

Even the Clergy Opposes Brunch Bans

Ann Kansfield, Pastor of the Greenpoint Reformed Church, weighs in on the Sunday morning sidewalk cafe ban:

The notion that sidewalk dining in some way restricts, inhibits or in any other way interferes with church attendance is utter hogwash. Consequently, I respectfully request that you not cite religious observance, specifically church attendance, as an argument against sidewalk dining… If there were so many church-going people in Greenpoint and Williamsburg that sidewalk seating would interfere with church attendance, all of our churches would be packed full of people. This is not the case… Sunday morning worship at the Greenpoint Reformed Church is so exciting and my sermons are so riveting and life-changing that sidewalk seating in no way keeps our congregation from attending services here. We simply traverse along the empty portion of the sidewalk and are able to get to church.

The pastor is right.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War

Lokal and Enid’s have both been issued summons for operating a sidewalk cafe before noon on Sunday’s. In addition to 300 Enid’s customers who think this crackdown is bullshit, you can add Borough President Marty Markowitz.

War on Brunch: First Blood

As ridiculous as the law (and it’s enforcement) is, one has to ask – who is eating brunch at 9:35 on a wet and windy Sunday morning?